Harvey Firestone Quotes
100 Harvey Firestone Quotes
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A statement of condition can be a prospectus – in fact, it is the best possible kind of prospectus – but it ought not to be prepared in enthusiasm. It ought to be absolutely frank and entirely conservative; then an explanation will show that actual conditions are a little better and not a little worse than represented.
Harvey Firestone
It is more than unsafe – it is just a waste of time – to start into business with money that has not been embarked for better or for worse. It may be possible in exceptional cases to pay the interest on borrowed capital, but unless one strikes a bonanza, any undertaking quickly to pay back borrowed capital is bound to result in failure.
Harvey Firestone
This thing of sleeping and eating with your business can easily be overdone; it is all well enough – usually necessary – in times of trouble, but as a steady diet it does not make for good business; a man ought now and then to get far enough away to have a look at himself and his affairs. Otherwise he gets lost in the details and forgets what he is really doing. One often sees that in foremen.
Harvey Firestone
Strange as it may sound, it is sometimes an actual injustice to a man to advance him. If he is promoted too rapidly, or is put into a position for which he is not fitted, he may fail to make good; and that failure may be a setback from which he will never recover.
Harvey Firestone
Why is it that man, just as soon as he gets enough money, builds a house much bigger than he needs? I built a house at Akron many times larger than I have the least use for; I have another house at Miami Beach, which is also much larger than I need. I suppose that before I die I shall buy or build other houses which also will be larger than I need. I do not know why I do it – the houses are only a burden. But I have done it and all my friends who have acquired wealth have done the same… In most cases and especially with men who have earned their own money, the house is just built, and when it is done, no one knows why it was ever started.
Harvey Firestone
Sometimes it seems that it might be better to go back to those simpler days, that one might get more out of a less complex life. But it cannot be done. One changes with prosperity. We all think we should like to lead the simple life, and then we find that we have picked up a thousand little habits which we are quite unconscious of because they are a part of our very being – and these habits are not in the simple life. There is no going back – except as a broken man.
Harvey Firestone
If you know absolutely that what you are doing is right, then you are bound to accomplish it in due season. I say this not because I read it somewhere in a book, but because I have lived it. For if there is any phase of adversity which our business has not met and beaten I should like to know it.
Harvey Firestone
I hold that, if anything in the business is wrong, the fault is squarely with management. If the tires are not made right, if the workmen are unhappy, if the sales are not what they ought to be, the fault is not with the man who is actually doing the job, but with the men above him and the men above them, so that, finally, the fault is mine. That is my conception of business.
Harvey Firestone
[In the early 1920’s with regard to the threat of war] Americans should produce their own rubber.
Harvey Firestone
Capital isn’t important in business. Experience isn’t that important. You can get both of these things. What is important is ideas.
Harvey Firestone
Thought, not money, is the real business capital…
Harvey Firestone
That is the trouble with prosperity – it hides the defects of a business.
Harvey Firestone
It is only as we develop others that we permanently succeed.
Harvey Firestone
You get the best out of others when you give the best of yourself.
Harvey Firestone
It is not possible for an executive to hold himself aloof from anything. No business, no matter what its size, can be called safe until it has been forced to learn economy and rigidly to measure values of men and materials.
Harvey Firestone
I have never found that pay alone would either bring together or hold good men. I think it was the game itself.
Harvey Firestone
The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership.
Harvey Firestone
[On the Firestone company developing a brake lining powder and the product development people bringing it to Harvey Firestone] Will the package withstand shipping? [The employees looked at each other and decided to take the problem to engineering to determine if the packaging could withstand shipping. Harvey stopped them, took the package and shook it hard. The package broke open, spilling power in his office. He then handed the package back.] It won’t withstand shipping.
Harvey Firestone
I attribute much of my advancement and progress to the fact that I lacked capital.
Harvey Firestone
We get out of life exactly what we put into it.
Harvey Firestone
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